


Scarred

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Devastation-verse [15]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-10
Updated: 2004-09-10
Packaged: 2018-10-21 07:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10680144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity





	Scarred

Buttery light from the harvest moon (if there could be a harvest in the middle of the broad blue ocean) poured in through the little porthole, blending with the flickering light of the hanging lamp to cover everything in the cabin with a diffuse, aureate light that reminded Jack Shaftoe of one summer evening, long ago, when -- diving beneath the scummed surface of the Thames at Deptford Creek, in search of a purse of gold that had sunk, with its late owner, to the riverbed -- he had looked up and seen the late sunlight lying like fine oil on the water, filtering and refining the light like some Alchemist until everything around him was gold and green, and he had hung there motionless, simply looking, until the red and the black began to edge in from all around him, and with a couple of strong kicks he'd propelled himself back into the air, gasping, and shaking his head when Dick wanted to know if he'd retrieved the sunken treasure: all that had been so long ago, and Dick dragged down and dead and blue, but here was Jack Shaftoe in the small cabin of a ship built all of darkest heartwood, swaying gently upon the smoothing billows of the broad ocean into which all that river had run, now; and he was not alone, for lying here beside him and tracing imaginary treasure-maps upon his naked, tanned skin -- and, so very much more deliciously, upon the _untanned_ portions of his body -- was a pirate captain, with black eyes ocean-deep and a mouth full of gold and glitter and the most extravagantly deranged compliments ("To tell you the truth, Mr Shaftoe, there has never been anyone, no man nor any woman, who stirred my heart -- not to mention various other parts of me, here, put your hand here and _feel_ how you stir me, eh? -- and my soul in the way that you've done since that night in Southwark; every minute, I swear it, and there's more treasure in you than in every one of the _Black Pearl_ 's holds, aye, and than that Isle's cold gold-filled caverns -- like a dragon's bed, mate, lacking warmth; but _you_ ...") and not just any pirate captain, oh no; Jack Shaftoe had somehow (and while he seldom believed in Luck, he was now inclined to thank every deity, every star, every turn of card or tumble of dice) won Jack Sparrow, or at least won the opportunity (nay, the right) to lie here beside him in his bed, to lie _close_ because the bed was not quite wide enough for two, and run his own hands over Jack Sparrow's gloriously golden skin (far less of it pasty-white than Jack Shaftoe's own, but then Sparrow had spent years sunning himself, o marvellous image, on the light-drenched black decks of the _Black Pearl_ ) and press his mouth against Jack Sparrow's skin, his scars, his own red mouth full of gold and words; "Jack ..." he murmured, liking the sound of his own name when he spoke it with such desire and fondness, and Jack Sparrow smiled at him, and put his mouth over Jack's own and inhaled the air out of him with thrilling intimacy, so that Shaftoe, quivering, was breathing with the same dizzying slowness as Jack Sparrow, and Sparrow's hands were doing something _fabulous_ with Jack's skin, smoothing it out and feeling his way over it like a blind man tapping his way over cobbles; "What's this for?" he murmured against Jack's mouth, and his pitchy gaze held Jack's, but his thumb was tracing the little V at the base of Jack's own, and so Jack said, "Nay, I'm sure you told me you knew your letters, Captain?", grinning wide, so that Sparrow's smile sharpened and he did something with his other hand that made Jack press closer into the embrace, trying to speak and failing, and just moaning into the next kiss; "Vagabond," he said at last, "it stands for vagabond"; "Aye, and I the pirate," murmured Jack Sparrow pridefully, and Jack reached out (not very far at all) and traced the P on Sparrow's forearm, and next bent his head down and tasted first the downstroke, which was smooth and almost savourless, and then the curve of seared skin, where salt and musk (possibly his own seed, a thought that would have appalled him before today, but now simply excited him with its sheer _potential_ ; and then down, the dark hair of Jack Sparrow's forearm catching in his teeth -- he tugged, and Sparrow yelped -- to lick at the blue lines with which some careful hand (who'd come so close, and sat and worked at Sparrow's skin with Sparrow's black gaze bent upon him?) that sketched four primal elements, sparrow and sea and ship and sun, on the underside of Sparrow's skin; "tastes of sunshine," he said, looking up at Sparrow from under his eyelashes, and winking, and Jack Sparrow laughed and pulled him up to another kiss, with his hand rubbing over the ridges on Jack's back, and Jack returning the favour, thumbing the flogging-scars on Jack Sparrow's back as though they might sing out like the strings of a mandolin; there was something terrifying, something revolutionary, about this brotherhood of bodily testament, as though their lives were written on their skins and Jack Shaftoe, here, no less literate, no less able to read Sparrow's tale (and oh, how he longed to decipher it all, and to be a part of those chapters to come!) than Sparrow to read his own; so much experience shared, and so much separate and distinct, and so very many tales to tell here in this bed, face to face, Sparrow's beard scratchy against Jack's throat as he tongued the notch in Jack's shoulder where some Covent Garden strumpet had taken exception to Jack's presence in her boudoir, despite his protestations that he was only passing through; Jack sighed, and laughed a little, and arrowed his tongue beneath the pungent sail-maker's patch on Jack Sparrow's palm, which had felt surprisingly interesting against his skin but which hid a patch of salty skin that Jack imagined pure white; he used his teeth on the knots, and then -- ignoring Jack Sparrow's half-hearted protests -- on the slippery knotted thongs, and laid Sparrow's scarred palm open to the air; it smelt of old leather, and sweat, but mostly of Sparrow, and Jack ran his tongue along the ragged cicatrice as gently as he'd have run a finger along the raw, red wound it had once been; it looked to Jack as though someone had taken a knife (had it been sharp, clean, Sparrow's own?) and slit open Sparrow's hand until the bones showed white, and the thought of that crippling cut (and the slow healing of it) made him queasy; he raised his eyes to Jack Sparrow's, and did not ask, but simply waited: and Sparrow, having quelled (Jack'd felt it) the urge to pull away and even, perhaps, to rise from his (their?) bed, said softly, looking at Jack Shaftoe without really seeing him any longer, "'Tis where my lifeline ran, once upon a time."


End file.
